3.) The hour glass is most likely do to memory. 6mb is too low. You need to get it up into the 15mg range. You can do this by following the link listed below. Make sure all media is stored on the SD. Always close programs being careful not to leave them running in the background.

All of my pictures and ringtones are saved to my 2GB card. The only things saved to the device are the 8 apps. Can 8 apps really take up that much space?

What's the ideal free memory to be running at all times?

You need to remove all of the un-used languages, sample video and audio to make room for those applications that you are installing. Please review the link and follow the instructions. I don't have your model so I don't know the magic number but I'm guessing it's between 15mg and 20mg.

Sorry for being such a n00b, this is my first BlackBerry device though and I've only had it for a week!

Just freeing up the 14mb will make all the difference in the world. The Blackberry is not running a Xeon processor so close what programs you are not using and do a hard reset every week and you should be fine.

Okay, this is really frustrating. My free space has dwindled back down to 9,000,000 bytes and I don't know why. I'm a heavy user of JiveTalk, but I turned off chat logging and I'll exit long chats frequently.

Do I have a buggy device or am I misusing my Curve? Do I need to exit/close every app when I'm done with it instead of just going back to my main screen?